Or otherwise this will give you a more positive identification if you’ve spotted a plant elsewhere that you are interested in. This can aid identification and help you to decide whether you want to keep it in your garden or lose it. If you see a plant which looks like corn at another time of year when it has not flowered or produced cobs, it can be useful to keep an eye on it and wait for it to flower in the summer. Zea mays is wind-pollinated, so planting them close together maximises the chances of pollination and getting a greater yield during harvest time. One way to identify corn or maize growing in a field is by the dense-spacing and uniform rows. When the plant flowers in late summer, the flowers look like long, pale yellow or green tassels protruding from the end of the cobs. The stem can become 3-4 centimetres thick when the plant matures in summer.
The leaves are narrow and opposing – they grow on opposite sides of the stem, all the way up. Varieties are usually tall but the height varies a lot so it is difficult to identify corn by height. In late summer, it is easy to identify corn due to the presence of cobs sheathed in green leaves (the husk) and positioned closely around the tall, straight stem. The biggest producers of corn in the world are USA, China and Brazil. One of the reasons that corn has become such a successful and widespread crop is thanks to the fact it’s very easy to modify the maize genome.Ĭurrently, maize is the third biggest crop in production in the world and is used for everything from human and animal nutrition to alcoholic beverages, sweeteners and even fuel. The cultivation of corn has a long history and was originally domesticated around 9000 years ago in Mexico. This species is a member of the grass family, grass family Poaceae. All cultivars come from the original wild plant Zea mays which originated in Central and South America. There are very many varieties of corn grown today, almost all over the world.
These eye-catching varieties are grown primarily for aesthetic purposes and can sport bright foliage and multi-coloured cobs. There are also some varieties of corn that are grown for ornamental purposes in gardens and public areas. Corn and maize will be used interchangeably in this article. Field corn, also known as maize, is the variety that is grown for animal fodder and harvested when the kernels have matured and dried ( dent stage). It usually makes its way to our dinner tables in the form of corn-on-the-cob or tinned corn kernels. It is high in sugars (giving it it’s sweet-sounding common name), and picked when the heads are immature (the milk stage). The sweet variety, also known as sweetcorn or sugar corn, is the variety most commonly grown for people to eat, and very popular amongst home-growers. Some of these includeĬorn, is a common arable crop gown for both animal and human consumption. Perhaps you have sighted an interesting plant growing in a farmer’s field that looks exactly like corn, but without the tell-tale cobs? Or you may have found a corn-like plant growing in your backyard or local park? There are, in fact, many plant which look suspiciously like corn and could easily fool a passer-by.
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